I started to reply to this and then decided I would just quote one of my favorite writers, mainly because he stated it so succinctly.


"The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can
happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect
democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a warm
body democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count
equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction. Once a state
extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite,
that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the
plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses
without limit and that the productive members of the body politic
cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or
in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader.


To Sail Beyond the Sunset
Robert A.Heinlein